Practical Problems And Countermeasures In Maintaining Grassroots Stability

Maintaining social stability is the primary task of Chinese local governments currently. China is now in a social transition period, or a convergence period of problems from both the old and new society, when the social contradictions and social conflicts will inevitably increase, thus generating huge pressure on the task of maintaining social stability. Emphasizing social stability maintenance means that the social order is unstable to some extent, and furthermore, the deeper cause is that the state system, to some degree, has lost its function, which includes: the channel of interest articulation is abnormal; the government does not possess the enough authority and practical capability of solving interest problems and interests polarize severely. The social contradicts and conflicts cannot be settled through normal channels, as a result of which they are often resolved by illegal approaches, which further marginalize the state fundamental system, thus decreasing the marginal utility of stability maintenance, increasing its cost, lowering government authority and gradually losing public credibility.Most mass incidents originally take place in the grass roots. So the local governments have to directly face the destructive power of it, which if indiscreet will result in severe consequence that will not only be a tremendously huge challenge to the local governments, but also challenge the effective function of local mechanism of stability maintenance. China is now in a period of system reformation, social transition and interest competition, where unequal interests relationships and patterns result in diversification of interests subject and their appeals, which is also the fundamental reason of characteristics of the public's interest articulation such as increased number, enlarged size, intensified action, many induced reasons, wide range involved and strong antagonism. Although there are a certain number of documents about practical problems and strategy research of local stability maintenance, systematically theoretical research still lacks. In contrast, there is a great deal of problems research that directly relates to the incident itself or under the old contradiction-solving system, which evidently is unable to satisfy the current situation of local stability maintenance under the new trend. Due to its special national conditions, China cannot imitate other countries'systems and must explore it based on its domestic situation even though it is beneficial to learn from abroad experience in a way. Consequently, the primary research target of this text is to know how to research local stability maintenance system under the background of social transition and interest competition and how to overcome its shortcomings and further promote it.This paper studies the actual situations of the maintenance of stability of the Chinese grass roots, particularly the features of the Chinese grass roots, by using research methods of theoretical analysis and literature analysis. In the paper, an in-depth theoretical study is carried out to analyze the current situations and existing problems, with the specific methods of literature analysis, theoretical analysis, deductive reasoning, field investigation, interviews and so on.The main contents of this paper are the realities of the maintenance of stability of the grass roots and the countermeasures. As for the research framework, firstly, it surveys the actual situations of the maintenance of stability of the Chinese grass roots; next, it analyzes its causes from different categories and levels; then, it gives a scientific and logical summary of the various causes; lastly, it proposes a new institutionalized mediation model of contradictions for the realities of the stabilization of the grass roots in the new period and new situations, with the fundamental aim of achieving the scientific development and the lasting stability of the society. The author believes that the reality of the stabilization of the grass roots is not optimal in our country. With the frequent occurrences of unrest incidents and conflicts, the costs to maintain the stability of grass roots increase sharply and the local governments fall into a vicious circle, in which the more the governments mean to maintain the stability the more unstable the grass roots will be. The key reason is that there are defects in the existing stabilization system, which makes it hard for the people to express their normal interests for a long time. What's more, the local governments'stabilization means, which are too simple and violent, will often intensify the conflicts.However, there are many problems in the current local governments'maintenance of social stability. Firstly, the understanding of the maintenance of stability is different. The maintenance of stability, which should be meant for maintaining the peace of an area, is regarded as a pure political task by many government officials who pursue the seeming stability in the work. This will have a bad effect, that is, the more the government officials emphasize on stability, the more they will not tolerate people's demands of rights. What's more, they may set the maintenance of rights against the maintenance of stability, and define the contradictions among the people as ideological and political issues. Secondly, the means to maintain stability is not good. In some areas, government officials ignore the laws in their work, either administrating instead of following the laws, or replacing the authority of the laws with personal authority, or relying too much on their own experiences. They may suppress the masses violently, or buy peace with money, tolerating and compromising with no bottom line. These measures which only scratch the surface of a problem will not only increase the cost that is used to deal with social conflicts, but also undermine the social justice. Thirdly, the goals to maintain stability are changing. To maintain stability is meant to achieve lasting political stability and to improve the healthy development of economy. However, now it is connected with the officials' performance evaluation, or becomes a fig leaf for the errors of the local government. This practice will not help maintain stability and it is carried out at the expense of the rule of laws. If social contradictions and conflicts could not be resolved, the temporary stability will also eventually vanish.This paper proposes a new mediation concept of contradictions according to the law of social development. It attempts to replace the current institutionalization with systems, so as to make the channels smooth for the people to express their interests, maintain a dynamic balance of the society and to achieve long-term stability. To achieve this goal, we should explore the fundamental causes of the current situations of the maintenance of stability of grass roots according to the new social context, and try to maintain a dynamic balance of the society, and find new legitimate and reasonable mediating mechanisms of conflicts.